Tag Archives: Nursing Homes

Morning News Podcast: Nursing Homes, Hong Kong Protest & Fake News

Audio July 2, 2020 boomersdaily Leave a comment

Elderly people in nursing homes make up 45% of COVID-19 related deaths in the US. Nursing home alternatives have been on the rise for the last decade, but the pandemic has made alternatives more urgent.

Plus, the United Kingdom offers to protect the freedoms of Hong Kongers, as China arrested protesters under the new security law.
And, a new survey by Pew Research Center shows a portion of Americans believe conspiracy theories and other false information about the coronavirus pandemic.

Guests: Axios’ Kim Hart, Dave Lawler and Mike Allen

Health, News, Old Age

Elderly & Coronavirus: Nursing Homes Increase Guest Symptom, Travel And Exposure Reviews

March 11, 2020 boomersdaily Leave a comment

From a Harvard Gazette online article (March 10, 2020):

There’s a symptom review, there’s a travel review, and there’s an exposure review. And if the answer to any of those questions is yes, then you’re asked to not come in. And so far people have been compliant and have left. So that is a good thing.

If you have a cough and a fever, if you’ve got respiratory symptoms and you’re short of breath, if you’ve traveled to a place of concern or if you may have been exposed to someone who did — especially if you’re symptomatic — then I would definitely ask, “Do I really need to visit my grandma today? Can I wait and can I Skype her? Can I do FaceTime?”

I know that’s hard for some of our older adults who aren’t technologically savvy, but maybe now is the time to get them hooked up. It really would be heartbreaking if, in wanting to do something positive for someone’s emotional or mental health, you ended up infecting them.

Harvard-affiliated Hebrew SeniorLife offers a continuum of care for 3,000 elderly people daily, with a range of services including residential assisted living, short-term rehabilitation, outpatient services, and long-term care for those with chronic illness. In a Q&A interview aimed at understanding the challenges involved, Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor Helen Chen, Hebrew SeniorLife’s chief medical officer, discussed steps the facility has taken to combat the virus and the outlook going forward.

Read full article

Aging, Medicine, Opinion, Senior Living

Elder-Care Crisis: Early Screening For Dementia, Increased Preventative Primary-Care Are Needed

February 10, 2020 boomersdaily Leave a comment

From a Wall Street Journal Opinion article (Feb 10, 2020):

How to address the elder-care crisis? Ideally, doctors would screen older patients for dementia. An early diagnosis helps patients understand treatment options, plan for the future and receive appropriate care in the hospital.

Other steps include: more preventive care, changes to Medicare’s rehabilitation policies, adopting new reimbursement methods, and developing new measures of success. Primary-care offices can prevent hospital visits, but Americans seeking primary care face an average wait time of 24 days. This might not be a problem for a patient in need of an annual physical, but conditions like chest pain or infections require prompt treatment. Primary-care offices that offer same-day sick visits, home visits for bed-bound older adults, or at-home monitoring of conditions could reduce emergency department volumes.

Read full article by Elizabeth Goldberg MD

Homes, News, Old Age

Senior Housing: Baby Boomers Choosing To Stay In Own Homes Threatens New Facilities

November 13, 2019 boomersdaily Leave a comment

From a Wall Street Journal online article:

The rise of technologies that help the elderly stay in their homes threatens to upend one of commercial real estate’s biggest bets: Aging baby boomers will leave their residences in droves for senior housing.

Developers and senior-housing companies have spent billions of dollars over the past five years to build facilities that provide housing, food, medical care and assistance for the elderly.

While these properties have been filling up with people born during the Depression or World War II era, real-estate investors are eagerly eyeing the massive baby-boomer generation: 72 million people born between 1946 and 1964, or about one in five Americans. Their needs would require hundreds of thousands of new units, if previous demand patterns persist.

But this wager on elderly care is falling short of expectations, and there are concerns that it could become one of the biggest real-estate miscalculations in recent memory, some analysts suggest.

Health, Reviews

Long-Term Care: A Highly Contagious, Drug-Resistant “Fatal Fungus” Spreads In Nursing Homes

September 12, 2019 boomersdaily Leave a comment

From a New York Times online article:

Scientific research on nursing homes and drug resistance is sparse, but some recent studies offer evidence of the problem. A study published in June in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases found that patients and residents in long-term care settings have alarmingly high rates of drug-resistant colonization, which means they carry the germs on their skin or in their bodies, usually without knowing it, and can pass them invisibly to staff members, relatives or other patients. Elderly or severely ill people with weakened immune systems who carry the germ are at high risk of becoming infected.

Maria Davila lay mute in a nursing home bed, an anguished expression fixed to her face, as her husband stroked her withered hand. Ms. Davila, 65, suffers from a long list of ailments — respiratory failure, kidney disease, high blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat — and is kept alive by a gently beeping ventilator and a feeding tube.

Doctors recently added another diagnosis to her medical chart: Candida auris, a highly contagious, drug-resistant fungus that has infected nearly 800 people since it arrived in the United States four years ago, with half of patients dying within 90 days .